SA Renewal in Select Plus

Select Plus requires longer terms for purchases of Software Assurance (SA), Microsoft’s upgrade and maintenance add-on for licenses. Shown here is a renewal schedule for four SA purchases under the Select Plus program, on an agreement started at year 0.

Initial orders of SA in Select Plus always run for 36 months. This contrasts with Select, where SA purchases run for the remaining term of the Select agreement under which they were purchased, which can mean one, two, or three years. The Select Plus rule also means more expiration dates to track: as shown here, each of the four initial SA orders has its own corresponding expiration date 36 months later, whereas four SA purchases on a single Select agreement would share a single common expiration date—the third anniversary of the Select agreement.

For organizations that want to renew SA but don’t want to track numerous renewal dates, Microsoft sells extensions, lasting 25 to 35 months, for which customers pay a prorated amount for the extra months. For example, the first two SA purchases shown above are started partway through the first year of a Select Plus agreement, and would normally expire between its third and fourth anniversaries. The organization can buy a 33-month extension for the first purchase and a 27-month extension for the second purchase, so that both fall due on the sixth anniversary of the contract.